Anthony Hopkins is not the movie's villain. Far from it. He is its hero, performing a stunning act of gallantry at the conclusion of the film to leave us all to meditate on his genius and hidden virtues.
The movie's villains are the conservative creeps over at the FBI and Justice Department, and avaricious Italian detectives and animal-abusing Italian farmers.
Clarice Starling, the FBI agent charged with finding Hannibal, explains to a colleague — a critic of homosexuality whom the audienced is permitted to hate — that Hannibal eats only the “rude,” not the innocent, like her. (Julianne Moore plays this role rather mindlessly; the movie suffers from the absence of Jodie Foster, Moore's much more intense and soulful predecessor).
Hannibal wouldn't eat, say, a Sierra Club member. But he is willing to chow down on Mason Verger, a born-again Christian ensconced in a Southern mansion. Verger, the producers make clear, is worth feeding to the lions, because he is quite rude. For example, he tells Clarice that she seems more nervous about religion than Hannibal, and that Christ is the source of redemption. Now that's really beyond the pale.
Hannibal is never so rude and crass as that. On the contrary, he is the soul of class. Sure, from time to time, he will masticate on people's brains. But that's nothing compared with his compensating virtues.
When we first catch up with him, he is in Italy, presiding over a research library in Florence. He is quite learned, taking in Opera one night, reading Dante the next. He finds time to do a little scholarship on Judas Iscariot, the Church's first dissident bishop, whom scholars are now busy rehabilitating. At one point Hannibal even comments that St. Paul was a misogynist. He may have his flaws, but my, what an enlightened fellow!
The modern Italian professors connected with the library size Hannibal up as thoroughly sound. But a money-grubbing detective spoils this concord. Seeking reward money, he tries to turn Hannibal over to Mr. Verger, his Christian nemesis (whom Hannibal had disfigured horribly in the past).
What a silly man this detective is. He dies too. But we don't shed a tear, since he obviously lacked the depth of soul of Hannibal.
It is too bad Nietszche didn't live to pay $9 for Hannibal. He would have enjoyed it. Hannibal is a real Superman — an existential hero for the enlightened to emulate, an evolved life-form for the Darwinians to champion.
After all, as the modernists have taught us, some people don't deserve to live. And who's to say that cannibalism is wrong everywhere and always? That's a relic from Natural Law thinking we discarded a long time ago.
I once asked a modernist Dominican if cannibalism is intrinsincally sinful. He said no. I had a hard time with his answer, so he called me “rigid.” Cannibalism, I failed to understand, is defensible, if ordered from the right menu.
At the end of the movie, Hannibal is seated next to a small child on a plane. He is, naturally, avuncular toward the boy. He gently informs the boy, as he shows him one of his curious victuals, that it is always good to try “new things.”
Hollywood obviously agrees.
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